[FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

Sun Jan 28 14:35:41 EST 2024

On 1/27/24 10:25 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> People are rightly livid with the gas and electric utilities here in 
> California, but the state is doing better than other states on 
> renewables.  More than half the grid is solar during the day.  Large 
> installations of batteries are in use and investments in offshore wind 
> are expanding.
>
I'm a fan of localizing and distributing as best we can.   It is 
probably overly optimistic on my part but combinations of home-scale PV 
with storage including EVs (with two-way interconnect)  might really 
help unload the grid and displace grid-growth with grid-upgrade.

I'm not a fan of massive/centralized *anything* even though the "economy 
of scale" arguments tend to have some advantage...

I don't know what is really happening in TX/ERCOT, but my liberal bias 
has me believing that all the squealing going on among TX GOP types 
about how somehow wind/solar is the *reason* for their various 
grid-failures in the last few years...   surely there are some anecdotal 
edge/corner cases where there is a germ of truth... but ....

My own electric co-op (Jemez Mtn Coop) started after WWII when the 
soldiers returning tried to repair/renew the small turbine in the creek 
that fed DC to a few dozen households and got carried away.   Now they 
(we) are entirely captive to a multi-state regional provider who has us 
locked into primarily coal  mined and sluiced 100 miles across the 
Navajo Reservation (but only for a few more years) while Kit Carson COOP 
(Taos county) recently announced some net-sustainable success story (not 
sure of the details...  electrons in the grid don't have 
block-chain-class identity, so short of being an isolated island, nobody 
knows their provenance?).    I'm hoping for a similar (r)evolution in  
our COOP, but plan to (continue to) take matters into my own hands 
locally, even if I remain grid-tied to be a "good neighbor".   The 
power-distribution for my neighborhood (4 in an isolated island) is on 
my property and last time JMEC did service they bolt-cut the lock and 
left it that way... I could slap an induction ammeter on the gear and 
see how much of any excess power I might peak with on PV was going 
downstream, and how much upstream (likely all downstream)...

> *From:*Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *cody dooderson
> *Sent:* Saturday, January 27, 2024 4:27 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate
>
> I am convinced that in the next 30 years, there will be some massive 
> geo-engineering projects to reverse the course of climate change. We 
> can only hope that they will be well thought out. Harvard has a 
> geoengineering program with a nice web page. I check it from time to 
> time and it helps me feel a bit more optimistic about the future.
>
>
> _ Cody Smith _
>
> cody at simtable.com
>
> On Sat, Jan 27, 2024 at 3:11 PM Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
>
>     I am not a big fan of Sabine. Her book "Lost in math" is too
>     pessimistic and too negative for me. She earns money from her
>     YouTube video channel. The more sensational the content, the more
>     clicks. That being said I agree that climate change is one of the
>     biggest problems, and the outlook is not good.
>
>     If we don't act now temperatures will rise inevitably, and there
>     is a real possibility our economies will collapse. But if we
>     prohibit all fossil fuels now our economies will collapse too,
>     because they depend on it. Airplanes, ships, trucks, cars,
>     heatings in our homes, plastic products,... everything is based on
>     fossil fuels.
>
>     What our leaders do is take they planes and private jets to fly to
>     climate conferences and economic forums where they agree on lofty
>     goals but when they return it is business as usual.
>
>     What we can do is voting for better politics - besides getting an
>     emission free car, using electric trains and public transport,
>     switching to sustainable energy, using less plastic, etc.
>     Eventually it will also mean less travelling by plane and cruise
>     ships. This means no longer vacation in exotic places - but
>     imagine how much better the air in our cities would be if the
>     majority of cars are emission free.
>
>     -J.
>
>     -------- Original message --------
>
>     From: Russ Abbott <russ.abbott at gmail.com>
>
>     Date: 1/27/24 10:01 PM (GMT+01:00)
>
>     To: ICE - debora shuger <Shuger at gmail.com>, Rob Watson
>     <rnwatson at humnet.ucla.edu>, Richard Abbott
>     <Richard.E.Abbott at gmail.com>, "Michael, Maria, and Luna
>     Abbott-Whitley/Penado" <mabbottwhitley at gmail.com>, Danielle
>     Abbott-Whitley <dlw0129 at gmail.com>, "Whitley, Julian"
>     <jln.whitley at gmail.com>, Dale Shuger <shuger02135 at yahoo.com>, The
>     Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
>
>     Subject: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate
>
>     I apologize for this relatively mass email. It was prompted by a
>     video <https://youtu.be/4S9sDyooxf4?si=_A767WzYTxriYGdl> by Sabine
>     Hossenfelder,  Sabine is a theoretical physicist who has spent
>     much of her recent life as a popular science writer and video
>     maker. See her Wikipedia page
>     <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder>.
>
>     The video linked to above talks about climate models. The bottom
>     line is that it appears that most of the current models have
>     underestimated how quickly earth will warm. The consequences are
>     frightening.
>
>     -- Russ Abbott
>     Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
>     California State University, Los Angeles
>
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